Ashtanga 5 - Saturdays and Moon Days, Yuck!

So in Ashtanga there is no practice on Saturdays. You can practice other things, Pranayama for exaple, but no Asana on Saturdays. This gives the body one day a week to take rest and integrate the information from the other six days. It's a sound concept and though not everyone follows this guideline, I choose to. I also ascribe to the no practice on Moon Days (full moon and new moon) guideline as well. This simply makes sense to me as the body is made up of something like 70% water and is certainly effected by the moon. This last weekend found the full moon on Sunday so it was two days without asana and boy pratice DOES make a difference for me. I find that I am walking through the day like a lost puppy without my morning asana. One day I can handle, but two days in a row is rough!

So, with that said I was thrilled to be back on my mat at 5:30 AM this morning. I worked the series through to Marichasana D and then moved on to my finishing asanas. I accidentally skipped Paschimatanasana and Purvatanasana. Tomorrow I plan to include them and work quickly enough to get through Navasana before moving to finishing.